May 3, 2015

One category of profession is driven by the mediocre, the average, and the middle-of-the-road. In it, the mediocre is collectively consequential. The other has either giants or dwarves—more precisely, a very small number of giants and a huge number of dwarves.

I’ve felt this for a while, but the magnitude of it only hit me last night in a conversation with a friend. The nation states and governments of today are problem solving using structures and tools that were created for a world that no longer exists. This is why we cannot solve the collective issues facing us, e.g. global warming, terrorism, regulation of the internet.

While the majority of my generation (myself included up till recently) remains blind to this, I think this fact is painfully obvious to the millennials. This could be the root of the apathy and hedonistic tendencies that we often perceive in them and complain about.

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April 5, 2015

This is exactly what I’ve felt for a long time. Finally I have found a quote for it.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.